


Stories About My Fighters

by Syntax



Series: Stories About My D&D Characters [2]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons and Dragons (Cartoon)
Genre: Animated Armor, Anthology, Baking, Bees, Character Transplant, Culture Shock, Dehumanization, Domestic Fluff, Fish out of Water, Gen, Hidden Royalty, Homebrew Content, Metafiction, Military Jargon, Secret Identity, Undressing, War, Warforged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26759203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax
Summary: Sometimes you create the perfect character and then can't find a game to play them in. So naturally, the next best thing to do is write fanfiction about them.Chapter 1: Ancelot, Animated Armor Battlemaster FighterChapter 2: Eric Valdes, Human Cavalier FighterChapter 3: Medovik, Swarmforged Eldritch Knight FighterChapter 4: ATLAS-1157-O29, Warforged Champion Fighter
Relationships: Original Female Character(s) & Original Non-Binary Character(s)
Series: Stories About My D&D Characters [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832869
Kudos: 3





	1. Battle Master

Indigo sighed loudly as she stepped into the small bedroom. "Ugh, what a fucking day, huh Ance?"

Her companion slipped into the room quietly after her, making sure to shut the door. It did not answer, and Indigo didn't really expect it to.

Still, it was nice to have someone to talk to.

The room was small enough that it only took Indigo a few seconds to reach the bed on the opposite wall. She slunk bonelessly onto the thick quilts, immediately regretting the layers of hard leather and beading that made up her performer's costume as they suddenly pressed into her stomach. A groan escaped her as the realization of how long it would take to get all this shit off before she could go to bed sunk in. Gods. After such a long day she just wanted to sink into her pillows and stop existing in this plane for a few hours. Why did the cold realities of employment have to ruin that for her?

She held out an arm over the edge of the bed. "Ance, come help me get out of this thing, will you?"

Her answer was the sound of metal plates rubbing against each other as empty boots trod across the wooden floor.

A leather palm met her outstretched hand and wrapped its fingers around hers before hoisting her back up to a sitting position. The empty visor of an equally empty helmet met tired purple eyes as armored hands very gently sought out the ties and clasps of her bodice. She lifted her arms up slightly so that her companion would have an easier time reaching them. It did not acknowledge the assistance.

She did not really care. She'd known it was mindless for months now, back before she'd met it when—

When the castle was attacked. When her parents were killed. When she'd had to escape to the surface and take on a fake name so the insurgents looking to take out the royal family couldn't kill her too.

Funny that she'd been assigned a new bodyguard on the very same day she would need it the most.

Indigo took a deep breath and blinked back any of the wetness building up in her eyes. The armor held up the opened ends of her bodice so she could slip her arms out, and she did so without any preamble. She took off the porcelain mask and adjoining veil she used to hide her face, and set about untying the waist wraps and skirts that hid her tail. Her companion, meanwhile, knelt down and started on untying her boots.

Her costume had a lot of layers. There was the flashy first layer that caught the attention and distracted from how much she actually had on. Then there was the layer that protected and hid her skin from view; it was a very breathable fabric, had to be to make up for how much of it she had to wear, but it was still uncomfortable to sleep in. Beyond that was leather for protection, linen for shaping, and quilted linen for both.

Life can be dangerous when you're a traveling bard. Life can be even more dangerous still when you're also a runaway princess. You do what you can to stay safe.

She let her boots slide off and flopped back down onto the bed while the armor placed them neatly by her nightstand. The sound of rustling fabric and metal against metal told her that it was probably moving the rest of her outfit over by the nightstand as well. Indigo debated the merits of asking her companion to brush her hair too so it wouldn't be hell to sleep with, but figured she was just... Way too damn tired for that.

Two of the other acts scheduled for today had bailed out without warning. She'd been singing and dancing and joking and generally being a one-woman vaudeville show for hours more than she usually did. She just wanted to sleep.

"That's enough for now, Ance." Indigo said, weakly waving a hand in the armor's direction. "Just... Go do whatever it is you gotta do for a while. I'll see you in the morning."

She buried her face in her pillows, and set out determined to know nothing more.

The armor knelt beside her bed for a few minutes, carefully watching as Indigo's movements gradually lessened and her breathing gradually slowed until it was satisfied that she had fallen asleep. Ever so quietly, the armor rose from its lowered position and retreated the few steps to the edge of their shared room, resting its weight against the wooden door and directing its attention firmly on the small window on the adjoining wall. The odds of something actually managing to slip through such a cramped aperture were small, but the armor refused to take any chances.

Both leather palms rested on the hilts of the weapons strapped to its side. And the armor waited.

It would keep her safe while she slept.

 _He_ would keep her safe while she slept.

For his princess, it was the least the armor could do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ancelot is an [Animated Armor](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/230312/Monstrous-Races); he and his companion Indigo (real name Polyhymnia) were characters that a friend and I made together with the intent that they would be a slowburn romance, with Indigo gradually realizing that her "mindless" bodyguard was in fact, fully self aware, and had also fallen for her. My friend eventually realized that, being aromantic, she probably wouldn't actually be able to play such a romance, so the characters were folded. I'm currently trying to work them in as npcs in a homebrew campaign.


	2. Cavalier

Keeping watch was boring as hell. Eric knew that. Pretty much the only way to make it _not_ boring as hell was to keep watch with a buddy and talk into the night until it was time to wake someone else for the next watch. He'd only been traveling with this group for a few weeks, so thankfully they hadn't run out of things to talk about yet, but that didn't mean he knew his party members all that well.

So it was probably for that reason that it completely blindsided him when his partner for the night's watch, Sir Arcturus, asked him point blank: "Okay, who are are you really?"

Eric felt like he'd earned the right to stare blankly in confusion for a few seconds at the question. Maybe blinking a few times for good measure just to really drive the point home. Who are you, _really?_ It wasn't really something that people just... Came up and asked you out of the blue.

Cripes, he felt his legs tense up like he needed to start running. Calm down, Eric, one thing at a time. No one's swinging swords at you yet.

He took another swig from his waterskin and said, as calmly as possible, "Eric Valdes, same as I told you the first time."

Sir Arcturus, from what Eric had seen so far, had a habit of taking their helmet off during the nightly watch so they could trade the day's protection for a night's increased range of vision, which was honestly the only reason he was able to see the exasperated face they made at his answer.

"Eric," they started, shaking their head, "I know you're just trying to keep the peace, but please _don't._ I've seen how you fight. The others might be too young to notice, all caught up in the thrill of their first adventure, but I know experience when I see it."

"I thought we'd already established I know what I'm doing," he pointed out.

And from what Eric could recall, they had. They'd established that the day after he joined up with this group, after he ended up doing the bulk of the work against the manticore nest they'd been sent to clear out. For all that Eric was young—too young, according to like half the party when he'd admitted he was still a teenager—he knew his way around monsters, and he certainly knew his way around fighting them.

Sir Arcturus just kept on shaking their head. "Eric, I don't mean a good few months spent on the road. I mean a good few _decades_. You fight like some of the veterans I've seen in the order."

Oh.

Ohhhhhh, _that_ was the issue.

Eric found himself scratching away at the back of his neck—which was not an easy or comfortable thing to do with gauntleted fingers—and felt a heat rising to his face that had absolutely nothing to do with the campfire.

"Eric," Sir Arcturus pressed.

"Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time," Eric replied, waving the paladin off with his free hand. "It's just... People don't usually notice that, you know? Least, they never did before."

"So you admit that you've been hiding something from us?"

He shrugged. "I mean... Not really? It's more that it just never really came up."

Next to him, Sir Arcturus gave a sigh. Eric didn't really know what kind of race or people Sir Arcturus was, all bone-white skin and hair with black rings around their eyes, but he'd been around them enough to notice that somehow they looked even older than usual in the flickering firelight. They set an armored hand on his shoulder and fixed him a look with their blank white eyes.

"Look," they said, "I want to give you the benefit of the doubt here, Eric. I want to trust you. I have been honest with you all about what I am—", they gestured to their face with their other hand and okay clearly there was some significance here that Eric was _completely missing_ , "And I would like to receive the same courtesy in return. I will not be mad at you. I'm sure you have your reasons. I just want to know."

Eric lasted a few more seconds of staring at those blank eyes before he turned away, trying to ignore the feeling that he'd failed a test somehow. Which was dumb, eye contact _wasn't_ a test, but still.

He huffed out a breath and tried to sort out what he needed to say in a way that would make the most sense. Which was easier said than done. Like, he wasn't the _worst_ speaker, Eric knew damn well that he could orate with the best of them if he needed to, but for some reason people just tended not to _listen_ to him half the time, so he needed to make sure that the next thing that came out of his mouth was as clear and unambiguous as possible.

"Well," he said eventually, "For starters, I am Eric Valdes, and I am fifteen years old, just like I said I was—"

Sir Arcturus opened their mouth to object but Eric silenced them with a quickly raised hand.

"—but the thing is, I've been fifteen years old for like... almost forty years now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, one of the fighters I have statted up is literally Eric the Cavalier from the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. Or at least, a version of him that's been trapped in the Forgotten Realms for 30+ years being perpetually 15 the whole time, since the idea of aging to adulthood in another dimension before being shunted back to your child body without any accommodations made to help deal with that is deeply uncomfortable to me.
> 
> Sir Arcturus is a changeling btw, Eric's landed in Eberron.


	3. Eldritch Knight

There was a certain sort of delicacy required for cake decorating that was very hard to pull off with hands made of metal and leather. Especially when that metal ended in sharp points rather than soft tips like most people had.

Then again, perhaps the composition of one's hands had less to do with things than the technique those hands employed.

Medovik turned their helm (unnecessarily, really, but they had learned quickly that people preferred to _know_ when they were being looked at) and examined their current chef de cuisine's grip on the piping bag.

"Princess Daffodil," they droned, "I would suggest lessening the pressure of your grip before—"

The bag promptly ruptured in the princess's tiny hands, leaking frosting all over the counter. Daffodil looked shocked.

"Before that happens," they finished needlessly, already reaching for a towel to clean up the mess.

"This is harder than I thought it would be." The princess remarked, still with somewhat of a dazed look in her eye as she contemplated the ruined piping bag. "The chefs always made it seem so easy when I went to the kitchens."

She headed over to the nearby sink to wash the frosting off her hands (and maybe lick a bit off too, not that anyone would have stopped her) while the construct wiped what they could off of the counters. The positioning required was somewhat awkward, with the kitchen being made to suit halfling proportions while Medovik's were more akin to that of the average bugbear, but they saw no reason to complain. They didn't exactly have joints or muscles to aggravate. Just leather and steel.

And honeycomb.

"Ease often comes with practice," they replied.

The princess hummed noncommittally. "We're going to have to make more frosting. That was supposed to be for the entire cake."

"Roughly one third of the original batch still remains."

"That doesn't feel like enough to justify all the math it'd take to break everything down into the right fractions," Daffodil groaned. "We can just make another batch and use the extra for decoration."

Medovik nodded. They didn't know much about baking, but they would cede to their princess's judgement. She didn't know much either, but she knew more than they did, and that was the important part.

They fetched a measuring cup from the counter (freshly cleaned, thankfully) and carefully removed the gauntlet on their left arm, making sure that their wrist was positioned over the mouth of the cup. Honey slowly began pouring from the gap in plating where their hand used to be.

Additionally, the low droning sound that accompanied the construct wherever they went increased in volume as soon as the appendage was removed.

As far as Medovik was aware, their construction was somewhat unique among the droves of animated armors that populated the world. They were not filled with empty air, or pulsing energy, or lingering spirits. The wizards that had created them, true to the practical (and gastronomical) nature of halflings, had instead seen fit to sustain the enchantments of their creation with the magic inherent in feywild honey. And to ensure a steady supply of feywild honey, they had seen fit to fill their creation with feywild bees.

The wizards' decision had made Medovik's duty much easier once they had been activated and assigned to Daffodil's guard. Few beings were quite so eager to get close enough to the princess to harm or otherwise endanger her if it meant also getting close to a towering construct filled with capricious stinging insects. Fewer still were quite so eager to risk angering such a construct.

"I think that's enough," Daffodil's voice cut in after a few seconds. Medovik tipped their arm up to stop the flow of honey and replaced their gauntlet.

Their fingers flexed a few times to check the connection now that the appendage had returned. Satisfied, they lowered their arm.

"Now we need..." the princess trailed off, thinking back to the recipe. It wasn't one that she'd made before. It also wasn't one that she'd informed Medovik much of yet, merely implored the construct to help her bake a cake until they accepted.

"Sour cream, powdered sugar, and heavy whipping cream." Despite not knowing what the recipe was, they _had_ been paying attention to the ingredients used thus far.

Daffodil's smile was beaming. "Right! I'll head to the icebox to get the cream, could you get the sugar from the pantry?"

She asked, but her small halfling legs were already well on their way to taking her out of the kitchen.

Medovik nodded anyways. "Consider it done."

They pulled a mixing bowl from under the counters as Daffodil left the room, dumping the measuring cup of honey inside before fetching the jar of powdered sugar. Most of their honey was spent either powering their enchantment, or feeding the bees that produced the honey in the first place, so while the construct did have some leeway in how their honey stores were used, they preferred not to pull too much from their internal supply at once. It wouldn't do to knock the cup of honey over and have to tap yet even more of the fluid to replace it. They'd already donated some to the cake batter.

Daffodil scurried back into the kitchen a few moments later, arms full of glass jars.

"I got them!" she chimed.

"Welcome back."

Daffodil opened her mouth again, likely to announce the next step of their frosting-recreation plan, but a small chiming started echoing through the kitchen at just that moment. She froze just a little bit, mouth still open, as her eyebrows scrunched inward with confusion.

Realization had the small halfling shutting her mouth and placing her supplies down on the counter in a hurry.

"Oh! That'll be the oven, the cake should be done by now!"

Ah. That made sense. Medovik scanned the kitchen for whatever trinket was making the chiming noise (eventually finding a small enchanted statuette in the shape of a bellringer doing what bellringers do) while Daffodil fetched some oven pads and pulled out the baking sheet.

The construct swiveled their head over at the tray as it left the oven. They had not been present for the making of the actual cake. The princess had shooed them out of the kitchen for that part of the process, claiming that it would spoil the surprise.

They didn't understand why there needed to be a surprise. Cake was cake. It wasn't like they could eat any of it, anyways.

What met their vision, however, was not what they were expecting.

Medovik tilted their helmet reproachfully at the golden brown wafers spread across the baking sheet.

"Those do not look like cake," they droned.

"No, but they look like _this_ cake," Daffodil replied with a knowing smile.

Their helmet tilted again, this time in what they'd come to learn was a motion more evocative of confusion.

She was baiting them. Medovik knew this immediately, knew that smile far too well from all the times the halfling princess had made it before. There was a joke here and she was waiting ever so patiently for them to spring it.

Luckily for her, they would spring that trap every time just to see the way it made her smile bloom.

"And what cake would that be?" the construct asked, straightening their helmet and waiting for the punchline.

Daffodil's smile brightened into something that could put the sun to shame.

"Why, my dear busybee," she said, "we're making medovik."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Medovik is a [Swarmforged](https://twitter.com/snickelsox/status/1234644689086746624) Eldritch Knight (though I am using a tweaked version of the subclass, courtesy of my dungeon master) that I initially drafted up literally the day that the swarmforged monster stats dropped. I physically could not wait to make one of them as a player character, and told the creator as such! The sheets I made for Medovik's pre-campaign prototype version can even be found in the replies to the version 1 iteration of the Swarmforged.
> 
> This is the first character I've written for that I'm currently playing, and as of this chapter we've just hit level 8! Whoo!


	4. Champion

With how loud the celebrations were outside, you weren't entirely certain that the night would pass by without at least _one_ enemy squadron attempting to take them out before it was all over. You'd been able to smell the alcohol from a fair distance away from the mess, and the singing carried for quite a while. Some of the warcasters were firing off spells into the night in lieu of fireworks. Surely someone would notice this grand display of hubris and strike them all down.

But, hey, what did you care? If the entire regiment dies to a man because they partied too hard the night after some meaningless victory and didn't notice the enemy coming until it was too late, well. It wasn't exactly your problem anymore.

But you were built to fight and you were built to do it well, so while all the skins in the regiment decided to ruin their organs with delicious poison, here you were in the munitions tent taking stock of all the remaining weaponry at hand by lanternlight and calculating how many battles the men had had left before they needed to requisition more. The swords and lances were good, but arrows were in perpetually low supply, so it would probably be a good idea to send the men back to the battlefield some time tomorrow to recover as many as they possibly could. The fact that that wasn't already considered standard practice disgusted you more than you were willing to admit.

This new war might be taking place some thirty years after the last one you'd been woken up for, but you hadn't thought that was enough time for the skins to completely forget how warfare worked.

The heavy canvas fabric of the munitions tent rustled off to the side, and the sound of something heavy stepping son grass met your audials from all the way in the back of the tent. You paid it no mind. There was work to be done and stock didn't take itself. Whoever it was would leave when they realized this wasn't the cathouse, and you could go back to spending the rest of your night doing something productive.

"So there _is_ another warforged here! And here I thought the sergeant was pulling my leg."

The charcoal stick in your hand snaps in half.

That was not a skin's voice.

The lantern you'd brought with you isn't bright enough to illuminate the entire tent, but it's more than bright enough for you to take it in hand and get a better look at your visitor. You don't see tins too often anymore. Sure as shit, when you raise the lantern high enough to see there's another warforged standing just past the threshold, sigils and plates integrated into their frame all fancylike in the way adventurers like to do things. They're all smooth lines and shark corners, with something artsy and complicated carved into their forehead.

The lantern in your hand falters.

You don't know what line they come from, but it's not yours.

You turn your head away and set the lantern back down so you can get back to your work, stubbornly burying whatever hope you might've had that one of your brothers had decided to come home. Atlanteans were a dying breed. You should've expected whatever tins came your way to be from some other line.

"Whoa, hey, what's with that reaction—" you hear, and there's a few crunching steps coming towards you as you've evidently hurt this shiny's _feelings._ "We're the only two warforged in the regiment, I thought you'd might want to—"

They cut off abruptly and it takes you all of a millisecond to figure out why. If they were coming closer, then they'd be coming into the lanternlight. And if they're coming into the lanternlight, then they'd be close enough to see the barcode on the back of your neck.

Your kind are dying, but they aren't forgotten. You wait for it.

"You're Atlantean," the shiny says. You can hear the awe in their voice. Good. Let them know that the giants whose shoulders they stand on still roam the world.

"Yup," you say, and you're perfectly content to leave it at that.

"W-what's your name?" the shiny asks. Evidently they are not content to leave it at that. "I'm Sigil."

"ATLAS-1157-O29."

They're silent. You wonder if this shiny's from one of the most recent lines that have movable faceplates so they can show emotion. You imagine if they are, they'd be frowning just like any organic.

"That's... not a name," they say, likely trying to sound diplomatic.

"Don't need one. If the skins get freaked out too much by all the numbers I tell 'em Atlas works just fine. They tend to perk up after that."

"That's not really a name either." Sigil says quietly. "You might as well name yourself 'Opran', or 'Perennian.'"

You're going to assume those are the name of countries that have sprung up since the last war. Not that you bother paying much attention to the current geopolitical climate, since you're never around long enough to care.

There's a note of unease in their voice. You get the feeling that for all the respect they must have for the first generation, they've never really met any of your brothers before. You get the feeling they probably take it for granted that they're some kind of person, that their line are all people who can make their own choices and go their own way. You get the feeling they probably think you're a person too.

You're not. You're a weapon. And unlike so many of the few brothers you have left, you have never forgotten that fact.

"Did you need something?" you say eventually, tired of how long the shiny's just been standing there in silence. You turn back to face them in the lanternlight again, mustering as irritated a look as you can on your blank immovable faceplating.

Huh.

You were right. Their face does have movable plates in it. You imagine your own must seem primitive by comparison.

"I...I just thought you might want to talk," they stammer out. The plates around their mouth move like a skin's lips do. Shit's uncanny.

"Talking is for civilians."

They get all quiet again. You can see their optics flick down to the notepad in your hand and the remaining stump of charcoal.

"You're working instead of joining in the celebration?"

"The work needs to be done. Doesn't matter if we won the battle or not. Sooner or later, these rookies are going to find out that the world doesn't stop turning just because they want to have a party. Until then, I'm not going to just sit idly by and watch them all get killed because no one remembered to take stock and make sure we have enough swords."

"...Don't you do anything other than work?" Sigil asks. There's something like sadness in their voice.

"Yeah," you say, pointedly ignoring it. "When everything's said and done, I go back to the vaults and sleep."

You're looking forward to it. No more marches, no more drunk rookies, no more skins making sad faces because they forgot just what exactly it was they made all those years ago.

No bull. No rap. No battle. No anything.

Being roused from your sleep to go off and fight again was something you hated like no other.

The shiny's not saying anything again. Those plates on their face have contorted into something that would be despair on a skin. You almost wonder if they're aware of the movement, or if that's something they have to do consciously. You'd ask, but you don't actually care enough to find out.

"You need anything else?" you say. "'Cause if not, I've got work to do."

They don't say anything else. They just take a step back, head shaking ever so slightly in the lanternlight, and they turn and walk away. You see them leave the sent with a rustle of heavy canvas, and they disappear from your view.

You turn back to your work and start writing down figures for all the gear in the tent.

The noises of celebration continue on outside unimpeded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ATLAS-1157-O29 is a warforged fighter whose homebrew lore was intended to be able to slot into any campaign. i wanted to explore the kind of psychology that could come only for a construct character that was made for a specific purpose, and how that would shape their sense of self. the idea i came up with was that the first generation of warforged, the ATLAS series (now called the atlanteans), were created alongside a vault that would keep them in eternal sleep until the next war came along, and Atlas hated being woken up since it meant they had to go fight again.


End file.
